I have lived in Virginia my entire life, so I am allowed to pick on the state’s capital. For the time being, I am going to lay off of Richmond because the city has managed to score an unbelievable concert. The National, which I can attest to being a fantastic venue, will host My Bloody Valentine and an unannounced guest on July 30th. If only that special guest was a reunited Slowdive, but I suppose this will suffice. As far as I know, aside from an August 1st appearance at All Points West in New Jersey, this is the only currently announced show that the shoegaze legends will be performing on the east coast. Tickets go on sale this Saturday, June 20th.

Tip courtesy of Pam. Image courtesy of Pitchfork.

Photo by Marc Rimmer

This is a re-post of my August 2006 interview with Chad VanGaalen. I remember calling Chad up just before the release of his second album, Skelliconnection. We talked a lot about his recording process, building homemade instruments, and his endless backlog of unreleased songs. Chad released Soft Airplane on Sub Pop last year and on August 11th Flemish Eye will release the debut from his alias Black Mold.

Hugh Miller: Who was the first person who encouraged you to release your music?

Chad VanGaalen: I was putting out tapes and CDRs independently for a long time by myself. Ian Russell, the guy that runs Flemish Eye [VanGaalen’s label in Canada], the label that put Infiniheart out originally, was probably the first person that was seriously interested in putting anything out.

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Photo by Angela Goodman

Nearly two years ago, I posted an interview that I conducted through email with Brian McBride of Stars Of The Lid. Considering my avid love for SOTL, it is one of my favorite things that I’ve ever posted on the site. You can imagine how depressed I was when I later lost the entire interview when I wrecked the site’s database and didn’t have a back-up of it. Thanks to the suggestion of a reader and the infinite powers of the Wayback Machine, I have at last recovered the interview and hope to upload more lost posts soon.

Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie have been crafting ambient symphonies under the Stars Of The Lid banner for well over a decade now. Stars Of The Lid’s latest album for Kranky, And Their Refinement Of The Decline, continues to develop the classical tendencies of 2001’s acclaimed The Tired Sounds Of. I recently had the opportunity to field questions to Brian McBride, who performed a solo set in New York City last month to close out the 2006 – 2007 Wordless Music Series.

McBride has lived in Los Angeles for several years now while Wiltzie resides in Belgium. They pieced together their new album by sending each other ideas by way of computer. I wanted to know how SOTL makes this work. McBride explains, “I can say that it helps if each of the artists are motivated. You have to send stuff back and forth on a regular basis. You often need deadlines. You gotta talk about what you like and don’t like no matter how abstract and obtuse it is. Talking about the minutiae of music is real difficult from far away especially with our music. The most comical thing in the world is for us to try to describe certain sounds that we like to the other person.”

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Andrew Morgan spent the latter portion of last month touring the UK with A.C. Newman, both as an opening act and a member of Newman’s live band. He recently posted a recap of the tour on his Wizard Of Ahs blog. Morgan played a handful of unreleased songs during his set and also performed a cover I’d love to hear: Elliott Smith’s “Pitseleh.” The tour coincided with the UK release of Please Kid, Remember on Broken Horse, the label that also handled A.C. Newman’s Get Guilty album earlier this year. The album (one of my favorites of 2008) was released in Japan last year by Moorworks and digitally on Morgan’s official site. Broken Horse are shipping the album internationally and American listeners looking to obtain a physical copy can do so for the generous price of $15 (including shipping). To sweeten the deal, this version also comes with a second disc containing Victory In Passing, one of three EPs that Morgan has been selling digitally since last fall. Morgan has returned from the UK and will appear at Jackpot in his current home of Lawrence, Kansas on June 22nd.

Image courtesy of Wizard Of Ahs.